Caning of Charles Sumner
Two days before the "sack of Lawrence," Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts began a
two-day speech in which he denounced "The Crime Against Kansas." "It is the rape of a virgin
territory," he declared, "compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery.'"
The Massachusetts senator proceeded to denounce a number of Southern senators, including
Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina. Sumner accused Senator Butler of taking "the harlot,
Slavery," for his "mistress" and proceeded to make fun of a medical disorder from which Senator
Butler suffered. At the rear of the Senate chamber, Stephen Douglas muttered: "That damn fool
will get himself killed by some other damned fool."
Two days later, Senator Butler's nephew, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina,
entered a nearly empty Senate chamber. Sighting Sumner at his desk, Brooks charged at him and
began striking the Massachusetts senator over the head with a cane. He swung so hard that the
cane broke into pieces. Brooks caned Sumner, rather than challenging him to a duel, because he
regarded the Senator as his social inferior. Thus, he wanted to use the same method slaveholders
used to chastise slaves.
Brooks then quietly left the Senate chamber, leaving Sumner "as senseless as a corpse for several
minutes, his head bleeding copiously from the frightful wounds, and the blood saturating his
clothes." It took Sumner three years to recover from his injuries and return to his Senate seat.
Brooks became a hero in the South. Merchants in Charleston, South Carolina, bought Brooks a
new cane, inscribed, "Hit him again." A vote to expel Brooks from the House of Representatives
failed because every Southern representative but one voted against expulsion. Instead, Brooks
was censured. He promptly resigned his seat and was immediately reelected to Congress.
In the North, Sumner became a martyr to the cause of freedom. A million copies of Sumner's
"Crime Against Kansas" speech were distributed. A young Massachusetts woman summed up
popular feeling in the North, condemning Brooks’ assault with these words: "If I had been there I
would have torn his eyes out and so I would now if I could."
In strife-torn Kansas, John Brown, a devoted Bible-quoting Calvinist who believed he had a
personal duty to overthrow slavery, announced that the time had come "to fight fire with fire"
and "strike terror in the hearts of proslavery men. The next day, in reprisal for the "sack of
Lawrence" and the assault on Sumner, Brown and six companions dragged five proslavery men
and boys from their beds at Pottawatomie Creek, split open their skulls with a sword and cut off
their hands.
A war of revenge erupted in Kansas. Columns of proslavery Southerners ransacked free farms
and took "horses and cattle and everything else they can lay hold of" while they searched for
Brown and the other "Pottawatomie killers." Armed bands looted enemy stores and farms. At
Osawatomie, proslavery forces attacked John Brown's headquarters, leaving a dozen men dead.
John Brown's men killed four Missourians, and proslavery forces retaliated by blockading the
free towns of Topeka and Lawrence. Before it was over, guerilla warfare in eastern Kansas left
200 dead.
A Beating in the Senate Chamber
The severe beating of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts by Congressman Preston
Brooks of North Carolina in the Senate Chamber on the afternoon of May 22, 1856 is
emblematic of the increasing tension between the Northern and the Southern states over the issue
of slavery.
Two days prior to the attack on Lawrence, Kansas, Sumner rose in the Senate and delivered a
three-hour-speech in which he denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its authors, Senators
Steven Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of North Carolina. Not content to limit his
criticism to the details of the Act, Sumner launched a vicious personal diatribe on its authors. He
called Douglas a "noisome, squat and nameless animal" and made derogatory remarks about the
slurred speech and scuffling gait of Butler who had recently suffered a stroke.
Two days later, on the afternoon of May 22 and the day of the sack of Lawrence, Congressman
Preston Brooks of South Carolina, and also Senator Butler's nephew, physically attacked Sumner
as he sat at his desk in the Senate Chamber. Beating him severely with a cane, his attacker left
the Senator blinded, bloodied and unconscious on the Senate floor. Senator Sumner was so
severely injured that he did not return to his Senate seat for three years.